Red
by pseudocitrus
Summary: Yato and a color that follows and leads him through his past, present, and future. Yato/Hiyori.


+ Just a little thing for yatoriweek dot tumblr dot com :) The available prompts were "fate" and "color" and i ended up using both somehow idk.

* * *

**Red**

4.

On the day of her farewell party, she looked different, somehow. He noticed immediately but couldn't place it. Throughout the evening he stared, trying to figure it out, and finally she forced a smile and began patting down her hair.

"What's the matter, Yato?"

"Nothing. You just look...different."

"I tried on some makeup," she admitted, and it struck him like a sword: that color, on her lips. "Nothing special. Just a little lip gloss. Um, does it look alright?" she asked.

It was a mature color — more mature than he'd realized, more than he'd been ready for. He tried abruptly to count how many human years had passed, and couldn't.

His tongue fumbled and finally he said, "Yeah."

0.

That color — cradled in the depression of his happy footsteps, following after him — gleaming puddles the same hue as the setting sun.

How many years had passed since then?

No, not years — years didn't matter.

How many human lifetimes?

5.

The color of Yukine's cheeks after they'd allowed him a couple cups of sake. He had laughed and then burst into tears and then collapsed, sleeping, into Hiyori's lap. The night stretched and swelled with their drunken laughter until finally everyone was leaving, finally it was just the three of them, under that tree that had outlived Bishamon's shinki. Its blossoms had come out early and fallen early and littered the ground alongside discarded sake bottles, candy wrappers, grains of stray onigiri rice. He heard a slosh in one of the discarded sake bottles he picked up, and he smiled and held it out to her.

"There's still some left. Want it?"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not of age yet."

"Neither's Yukine."

"That's different!" she laughed, but then hushed herself when Yukine stirred, when her own words sobered her. Yukine would never be of age.

8.

The color of the wine dribbling onto her thumb when she pulled out the cork. She poured a glass for both of them.

"Cheers," she said, holding up hers.

"What?"

"Cheers! I learned it from an exchange student. It's what they say in other countries, when they're about to drink."

"What does it mean?"

"It's something related to happiness, I think? Perfect for a happiness god like you."

She tipped the glass back, and didn't see him flush.

1.

The color of his hands after a task for Father. He turned them over and over, raising them to the light, watching how the blood dripped in lines to his elbows.

He squinted. There was something…

6.

He finished what remained of the bottle of sake himself. There was more left than he expected — he coughed, cleared his throat with a laugh — he sat down beside her. At least if his head was spinning it wasn't sinking.

"Hey, Yato," Hiyori asked, not looking at him. "This is a farewell party, but I'll still see you, right? At the university?"

Tenjin had been staring at him the whole evening.

"Yeah," he said finally, and then lifted up a hand, thumb and index finger in a circle. He smiled, too brightly. "If you have enough money, anyway."

"Of course," she laughed. Some of the color had wiped away from around her mouth after she had eaten, but most of it was still there, glinting, reminding him she wasn't the child he'd met. With every day that passed she got further from it.

He couldn't stop staring, and finally (mouth loose, head buzzy), he asked: "Why did you wear makeup?"

She pursed her lips, then shrugged. "I just thought it looked nice. You don't think so?"

"It's not that," he said quickly. "Well — well, though it doesn't matter, right? Whether or not you you're happy about it is the most important thing."

"Yeah," she said, "I guess," and after another pause: "You really care about my happiness, huh, Yato?"

He cared about it more than he cared for the shrine he had given her. He shrugged, then sniffed, as if offended. "Of course."

"You know what would make me happy?"

"What?"

"If you kissed me."

7.

The color of her blush, which she tried to hide by looking away.

Tenjin would definitely not approve.

He leaned toward her, heart skipping. He put his hand on hers. It was warm, and he felt strength seize him, as if he had taken hold of a shinki. Well, wasn't that close enough? Alone with Yukine, she was one of his strongest companions.

He pressed his mouth on her pursed lips, once, twice. The gloss rubbed off onto him and he licked it away. It tasted sweet, but not as sweet as her mouth opening again, and leaning forward him for more.

2.

"There's nothing there. Nothing but blood. Are you trying to find something different?" Somehow Nora's voice always found him. She spoke over his shoulder as he looked down at his empty palms.

"They're the same as they always have been," she sniffed. "I should know."

Drenched in a color that he could see even when it wasn't there.

9.

He took the wine glass from her hand and set it down on her table. He eased her onto the couch, and she looked up, leaned up, breath warm across his chin. There was a droplet of wine in the corner of her mouth and he pressed his tongue against it, and then against her, swallowing up all the dizzy deep bitterness of her, of another birthday behind her.

10.

The color that peeked out as she undid the buttons of her coat, her blouse. She reached for his hands and pulled him toward her, against her. As he met her it occurred to him that he looked about the same age as her now.

11.

And then, a little younger.

12.

The color of her cheeks as she gasped for breath beneath him.

14.

Above him.

13.

Around.

16.

The color of her eyes when he finally arrived, glittering, raw, the third day after she had been calling for him.

"Why!" she asked, voice heaving and shaking, and he cursed himself, his weakness, because maybe in another day or two she would have forgotten, both him and the fact people were starting to mistake him for a nephew or a little brother.

"Didn't you say my happiness was important to you?"

"Yeah. It is."

"So?"

"So," he snapped, "look at me! Do I look like a god of happiness to you?"

15.

"You're a god of calamity." Nora smiled. Her mouth, her eyes, her whole body smiled. The color of her names peeking from beneath her sleeves and gloves, all of them grinning.

"It's just as father said," she added, triumphant, smiling. "All you can bring humans is misfortune."

_Don't respond. Don't._

"She doesn't want to leave," he mumbled. She snorted. Her smile didn't falter.

"What did I say? Misfortune."

17.

The color of the autumn leaves.

18.

And then the autumn leaves again, whirlwinds, lifetimes. A blur.

21.

A blur.

19.

The color of the ambulance light, wheeling, screeching. Time was passing, had passed, was altogether too fast. The color of the lights at the intersections.

_Stop._

_Stop._

_Stop._

22.

Afterward, Yukine couldn't help it — he wailed and wailed and blight bloomed across Yato's shoulders and chest like blood in water. The stinging ached, but not as much as the fact that there was no one there to save them when it spread to his belly.

23.

No one but Kofuku, crying for Bishamon, who found him with Kazuma's sight, and supplied shinki that scrambled to build the barrier around them.

"Yato," she called, and when his cleansed body didn't respond she shook it. "Hey, Yato."

"Here," Kazuma said after a moment, handing her something, and Bishamon hesitated, then passed it into Yato's arms.

It was the shrine.

It was the last straw. He cried, more fiercely than the day he'd gotten it, and in his grip the shrine cracked.

3.

The color of all the lives he'd separated, and watched drip between his fingers, uncatchable.

24.

The color that he saw, one day, on his hand as he lifted it from the shards of an ayakashi, and raised it to the light. There was something strange about it. He lifted it, higher. The light caught it like it might a line of a spider's web, igniting it.

His breath caught.

This was it: the color that he'd seen sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, when he was doing other things — like searching for missing cats.

"Hiyori?" he called, and somehow — as it had been with Yukine, split in half before his eyes — he felt certainty that she had not vanished at all.

He waved his arms, desperate to catch the light again, and there it was — a line that stretched into the distance, that thrummed, that shimmered. Red.

_Yato,_ Yukine gasped, and they raced.


End file.
